F
irst, a long silence. Then, a post on the social media platform X late on Saturday, nearly nine hours after the United States struck Venezuela and announced the abduction of President Nicolas Maduro. In the post, President Emmanuel Macron celebrated the fall of a "dictatorship" and expressed hope that the "upcoming transition" would be "democratic." Yet he said not a word about the details of how the American intervention was conducted, as it trampled over all the rules of international law, and likely those of US federal law as well. The intervention came as a striking illustration of Donald Trump's predatory imperialism, as the US president shifted from threats to action. Macron was not alone among European leaders in not being particularly forthcoming on the matter. On the other end of the spectrum, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez "strongly condemned" the US operation. His government "will not recognize (...) an intervention that violates international law," just as it had not recognized the Maduro regime, he wrote on X. That was a clear position.
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Maduro abduction: 'Trump seeks to usher the Monroe Doctrine into a third era, that of post-Westernism'
Macron's reaction came as a break with France's diplomatic tradition, and it drew sharp criticism from political leaders, particularly on the left. Yet the most scathing criticism came from former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, who, speaking to the news channel BFM-TV on Sunday, condemned Macron's response as "blind, oblivious to reality and irresponsible," further compounded by a "logic of submission and vassalization."
